How to Host a Dinner Party

and tell the stories that matter to us. We're talking about how to how to host a dinner party, and I this is something that I do often, I know, and I wanted to talk to you about it because you're really good at it. And I haven't really hosted my own dinner party yet, and I am sure you learn a lot the first time you really do it. It's not easy. There's a lot of things to do,

you know, to make it successful. Um, And I think I'll just give you the first thought right off the bat, which is planned, like don't wing it, just like yeah you should, absolutely, I see you got the pen in your hand. This is important, I mean, so basically the first things first. Right. So it's like, so you're gonna have a dinner party. It's Friday night. You know how many people are coming over what would be like a

typical dinner party for you? Do you you think if you invite your friends, like I have like ten really great girlfriends about and then they all have boyfriends, so it's big. Okay, so twenty. Look, here's the thing. The thing about twenties, like ten and twenty is almost the same thing in terms of in terms of how much of work it is. It really is because most of the time people make way too much food anyway, and like what you think feeds ten feeds closer to twenty.

That happens all the time. And uh, I mean the only the only thing that obviously one of the main differences between ten and twenties, you know, all those kinds of things that go into it. Okay, So first things first is you want to decide what you're what you're gonna serve. And I think the easiest and the best way to kind of approach something like this is is create a theme. Okay, I was going to ask you about this if you thought a theme was a good idea,

I do it all the time. You'll say, like, you've been a plenty of my lunch and dinner parties where You're like, what are you cooking? And I'm like, we're doing Greek food today, or we're doing Italian food, or we're doing Southwestern food. You know. It's like for me, that makes it a lot easier for me to kind of like, you know, start somewhere and finish somewhere. So I'm just gonna give you like a you're you're coming

to this party. Christina's birthday party is this weekend, and um, I've been working on a couple of new restaurant concepts. One of them is like a a Southern Italian you know, Italian American themed restaurant, uh, you know, for lack of better ward, like red Sauce so to speak. You know, but it's gonna be you know, if this restaurant ever comes to Fruition, it's gonna be um you know, it's gonna it's gonna be upscale. It's not gonna be you know,

just big platters of food. It's gonna you know, swanky so to speak, you know, kind of club clubby feeling you know love. Yeah. Anyway, have the name of the restaurant, but we're not revealing that because it's it's actually a good one. Um. So uh. So for Christina's birthday, I'm picking a couple of things that I want to do that I think, you know, first of all, you know, it's gonna be twenty four people so far, and I'm gonna serve it family style, and I'm gonna serve it

over a period of time. This was actually want of her request. She doesn't want all the food to land all the same time, which is sometimes what I do. Often I just kind of land all the food at the same time. But that's just timing that. That doesn't really matter in terms of, like, you know, um, that doesn't really matter in terms of kind of getting it together. So here's what here's what the menu is, all right, So I'm doing baked clams casino. Now I have a

pizza oven here. So what I'm gonna do for for um uh, for the sake of keeping it simple as simple as possible, is I'm gonna do everything out of the pa of it. So I'm gonna do the bag clams casino out of there. Then we're gonna do roasted shrimp scampy. So I'm gonna clean the shrimp. I'm gonna make a compound butter out of garlic, lemon and some crushed red peppers. So we're gonna, you know, cook the and everything's gonna be in like an earthenware dis show

goes from the oven to the table. Right, the bag clams, the shrimp. The shrimp will be roasted. I'll put the compound butter with all those flavors running through it, the garlic, the lemon, the crushed peppers, some parsley, and then that butter will make its own scampy sauce in the caswell. Right, I'm gonna make a kale caesar, which is now seems to become the the caesar salad. And then I'm also

gonna do a chop salad. So the chop salads going to have um, chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, cheese, ridicio, and diving iceberg lettuce. I'm a big Iceberg fan with for this kind of cuisine. It's crunchy and crispy and it's good. And then I'm gonna take some pia chips, you know, out of the bag, crumple them up in my hands. It's crumple a word, no, crumble, crumble up, crumble, humble. I really want to crumple them, and then a red

white vineigrette. Okay, So so the salads, all right, I'm gonna have the greens cleaned in a bowl ready to go. In the chopped salad, I'm gonna have all the ingredients in a bowl ready to go, and I'll have the vinaigrettes ready so soon. So basically when I want to when you're ready to put them out, what I want to serve them. That's all done, and I'm just dressing the salad, putting it in like a pretty wooden bowl or some decad of bowl. So that's before anyone even

gets here, totally. Well, yes, Sophie, you have a lot of prepptice, no I know, but I'm trying to take notes about what you prep before. So you're prepping all of this before. All I'm gonna do when the guests get here. So far, okay. The clams will be in the in the shell, in the icas well as in the earthenware dishes. The oven is going to be into

the oven. I'm gonna put them in the oven, Shrimp cleaned in the in the earthenware dishes, you know, seasoned, the compound butter standing by so that when I put the shrimp in the oven and they roast, I put the you know, thirty seconds before I take them out. I put the butter in the over the shrimp. It makes its own sauce. Serve. Okay, the salads, as I just said, the greens, cleaned vinigrette, ready to go. Guests, get here, you dress them, chop salad, all the ingredients

in a bowl mixed together, dressing, ready to go. You guess, get here, dress it, putting the bowl. Now, I'm also making pizzas, like I'm making pizzas and baked pastas. They're all it's all coming out of the pizza of it. Now, this is a lot, I mean, and you have to remember this is what I do for a living. So it's it's it's a little you don't You could basically do the clams, the scampi, and the salads and be done.

I mean, that's plenty for your crew, right, I mean, you know, you make a house cocktail, you serve some wine, make sure you have a lot of water. Yeah. So I'm just gonna show you a really quick thing that you can just have out because I think dinner party always there's a beginning the middle of a name. So the beginning is you have to have something for people's knack on. So I'm gonna show you how to make

a white bean hummus. Hummus is usually made with chickpeas, but I like making it with white beans also, and you can use canned you can. I'm all four canned chickpeas, can white beans, black beans, because they're cooked perfectly every time, and especially if you're gonna purate them up and it's totally fine. They're nice and creamy. So we're gonna start with these, um, these white cantolini beans out of the can.

You strain out the drain out the liquid that's in theres them all, and then we're gonna add a couple of ingredients here. So we have tachini. Do you know what tini is? No, I mean, I've had it, but I don't know what it is. And it's it's like sesame seed butter, like peanut butter, but it's made out of sesame seeds and this gives it, like obviously a nuttiness, and it also creates like a nice kind of I

like the texture it brings to it. Yeah, it does kind of smell like peanut butter a little, but it's sesame seeds. Okay. Then we're gonna add some human or some ground cuman. Be careful with the human because it's very strong. And then we're gonna add a couple of clothes of garlic, and then squeeze some fresh lemon juice in here. And I just put this is not classically humus, but I just put like a little teaspoon of honey in there, because sometimes I find like the tahini is

and the garlic can be a tiny bit bitter. So I'm not I'm not putting this in here to make it sweet by any stretch of the n a nation, but just kind of it kind of bounces out a little bit of the bitterness. Now, sometimes I put cayenne in my hummus, do you want to spy? Yeah? I love that. Let me just grab. How did you come up with this recipe the white bean one? Yeah, I mean it's we's truly not that creative. I mean it's you know, you just started suding the white beans for

the chickpeas. But I like it because, like you know, I cook a lot of Italian food now, so cantellini beans are just part of the palette. So just a little sprinkled kayane in there. If you wait, go through the rest of the list, and then I have I have followed up questions. So then I'm gonna make two pizzas. I'm gonna make pizza dough two days before and I'm

gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna make two pizzas. I'm gonna do a mushroom, a Portobell mushroom pizza with roasted garlic and ricotta and rosemary oil and pecorino and fresh mozzarella. And I'm gonna do a red pizza, you know, red sauce pizza with roasted eggplant, um tomato, Calabrian chili is a reganoa mozzarella all right, So those are the pizza. So basically those pizza that's the first thing I'm gonna do, because the pizza has the shortest shelf life. Right, what

happens you bakon pizza comes out, it's good. Then you know, we can get into the cold pizzas. Uh, you know, debate and another time. But basically those pizzas are gonna be like my orders, So people are gonna get here. I'm gonna put it I'm gonna put a glass of wine or a cocktail in their hand, and then they're gonna they're gonna take a slice of pizza or two. And that's gonna. That's that's gonna. That's gonna, like, give everybody a pause for a second, because they're they're coming

over here. You know, I'm going. I'm going to Bobby House. I'm not eating all day. I want to eat this meal. And they're hungry. So when I get in here, I'm gonna stuff some pizza in their face. They're gonna be happy, so okay. And then and then I'm gonna do to two pasta's, but again they're baked, okay, which is a cool way to do pasta because you can do them in a casserole. So I'm doing a rigatoni with vodka sauce.

Your face, oh my god. And um, usually I do this one with vodka sauce, which is basically a creamy tomato sauce with vodka in it. Broccoli rob and then you know Italian sausage. I'm not gonna put the sausage in this because Christina's doesn't need meat. Um and fantina cheese running through the pasta. Put that in the casserole dish, and then on top I put fresh mozzarella and palm and then bake it in the pizza oven so it

gets really crispy, crusty on top. And then the and then the pasta is you know, surrounded by you know that fun tina cheese and the sauce. It gets really bubbly delicious, so good. But for the for the dinner party, which great is you can set these in the castrole dishes ready to go again, just put them in the oven. You can even put them in the oven before you guys get there, because it's gonna take a while. The

baked to pasta. The other the other pasta is gonna be porcini mushrooms and cremini mushrooms, um with a caccio pepe crust. So it's gonna have you know, peccorino and black pepper on top with mozzarella. Can be delicious. And then I'm doing I'm also doing eggplant palm. Oh my god. Okay, So as you can see, there's no meat in this meal. It's fish. There's some shellfish, um and and and basically vegetables.

So the eggplant what I do is I make. I make thick slice, thick slices, almost like eggplant steaks, and I roast them in the oven until they're soft, let them cool, and then I dredge them flour egg panco bread crumbs fried in a pan and so they're crispy. Then on top, I put uh, kind of like I showed you the other day with the chicken palm. I put the tomato sauce on top, then fresh munz of rella and some fresh herbs and bacon in the oven

toil nelton. Then you have egg plant parm and and then for dessert, you know she wanted a coconut strawberry cake, so basically I ordered their coconut cake. It's in my refrigerator right now and it's huge. It's gonna feed twenty people without even trying. Okay, but I'm gonna make a strawberry sauce. Oh smart, So I'm just gonna put the

strawberry sauce next to the coconut cake. If you want strawberry sauce on type of your coconut cake, be my guest, and I'm gonna put I'm gonna buy some gelato from from Italy and put the gelato out there. So you'll have gelato, coconut cake, and strawberry sauce. Um. That's it. So that's the menu, and you know there's but there's a lot more things to think about. That's just I mean, this is very exciting as a guest, but as I hosted, like maybe the most intimidating list I've ever heard. I

also I also ordered stone crabs. What, yes, I know that makes you happy. Oh my god. Wow. So I'm gonna put those out before people get there. Okay, so this is a little this is what I was going to ask. What are you what are you putting out as like a little appetizers sort of thing. What when people first get there, Like the clams and shrimp aren't part of that? Is that? Are they know? The clams and the ship are not part of the pieces the first thing that comes out, Then the clams come out,

then the shrimp come out, then the come out. Okay, so what's what's out when people get here? Cheeses, olives, you can put out like some cured meats if you want, purshoot those salami so um, you know, and then you know, have some sort of jams or quinns paste to go with the cheeses. Make sure that you have really good crackers and or you know, pieces of toast um and

you know it's Los Angeles. Will make sure the some gluten free ones as well, you know, and then or and you can put out like like make some whiteing hummus, like dips are really good. So it's just a little sprinkled higher into there, okay, and then food processor and then you can add I think it's good to add a little bit of water. Water, Yeah, let me have Uh, You're gonna add a little bit of water kind of it kind of like um, it thins it out a little bit, but also makes it like a little fluffy.

And then olive oil. I like mine to be a little bit of lemon. Oh, yeah, salt and pepper. You always have really nice um settings, Like you always have great like napkins and all that stuff. But like I'm not in a place where I'm like about to buy like really nice napkins. Like it doesn't matter. You can buy really good paper napkins that are very very pretty.

You know a lot of times I use those because you know, if I have like thirty five people in my house, I might have thirty five cloth napkins, you know, so it's it doesn't matter right people are like especially for like casual dinner pisces. And also nine percent of the time I'm serving family style, I'm not plaiting everybody's right. If there's six people here, i might plait it. But

if if beyond that, it's not happening. And so you have to make sure that you have platters and bowls so that you can serve big portions of these dishes. What now, what I'm doing is I'm doing a lot of stuff right out of the oven, So it's gonna be already in these earthenware dishes that can go in the oven and go right to the table. That's a really nice way to do it as well. But if you look at my coverage, you're gonna find like big decorative balls a lot of white ones as well, because

white is really good for food. Like you don't have to you don't have to buy like if you go to the store and you want to buy platters and balls and stuff like that to serve food on, just go white because the food is what's going to look really pretty right once you start adding colors to the pottery, it's really hard. Well, what happens is it's really hard for the food in the pottery colors to match up. I mean, it can happen, but it's it's harder. Yeah.

So because when I think about you serving like family style versus like like portioned out, like, I feel like because I'm one, I've never really hosted a dinner party before, but two because I'm like a newer cook and less experienced obviously, like I worry about timing, about like making sure things are cooked on top, like so that I'm not like wait, like I'm not waiting an hour to serve like one thing over another, Like any tips for that? Yeah. So again, you have to make lists and you have

to really plan this out. If you come to my house and I haven't dinner party, there's probably gonna be a list literally scotch taped to my cupboards and I and I and I have I have a menu that's one list where it's just the titles of the dishes. Then I have an ingredient list to make sure that

I've gotten everything I need from the store. I can promise you there's not been one single time, not one where I've gone to the store for like a significant dinner or lunch party and come back with everything I've needed. It doesn't happen. Somebody ultimately calls me, like on their way over, do you need anything? Yes, I need I

need three lines. You know there's and so like, don't fret, but make as many lists as you can and go over it to make sure that you're well prepped, because if you just try to do this in your head, you're gonna be screwed and cook within yourself. I just mentioned what twelve dishes. I mean, I'm gonna do this, okay, but this is what I do for a living. I mean, I go into iron chef mode because I have to. By the way, I'm nervous too. I want everybody to

have a good time. Like the food. I don't want people coming over to my house and be like I went to Bobby Flay's house food was just or whatever, like who needs that? I want I want people to think that you know that the food is good, so so for me. So like, if I I'm thinking about hosting my first dinner party right and I have twenty people's that's that's an undertake it. I know it's so scary but how many dishes would you recommend in that case? Like,

just just to be simple, let's pick a theme. Okay, I feel like pasta is easy to make, so let's do it talent fine, So basically, what you what I think you need? You're not making you're not baking pizzas. Okay, So that's like now, so you're gonna you're gonna make You're gonna do a salad. You're gonna do a pasta dish. And then, like I would say for you, you could either do like a fish or a chicken dish. Okay, what both of those make me nervous? I have a

really good idea for you. You can buy especially think about this for like, let's do fish. I'm not good at making fish. You're gonna be great at it. You're gonna be great at it. Okay, here's what you do. This is a really simple recipe for you. And this is the kind of flavorge you're like. You buy a whole side of salmon. Okay, so one big filet of salmon, and you just ask the fish manger to make sure all the bones are out of it, and you you

you you're gonna roast the salmon. In your oven slowly, and you're gonna make a dressing, literally a vinaigarette out of lemon juice, olive oil, capers, and some fresh herbs. Okay, you're gonna you're gonna put salt and pepper and some olive oil in the fish. You're gonna put the fish

in the oven until it's cooked through. And you and if you cook salmon nice and slowly, which is a good thing for you to do, because do you keep it in you just put it on a sheet pan, put it in your oven at like three like three degrees, very low oven. Because what's what's really great about salmon sylphie is that if you cook it slowly, the fat melts slowly and it basically cooks in its own fat.

It's incredibly tender, like there's nothing like it. And then when you're when it comes out of the oven, you take that vinaigrette, that caper and lemon vinaigrette I just tell you about, and you just you just spoon it right on top of the fish when it's hot, and you serve it and then people can just like take pieces of it. I've done this in front of you. I've done versions of this where I saw where I where I serve like a whole side of a fish.

You don't even cut it because people just take a big spoon and they take pieces of it and put it on their plates. Then you should make a salad. Do you want to make a caesar salad? Perfect? You can make a call caesar black cow um. You can use like little gems, which is which is like baby or maine. That's a really good lettuce. If you want to put a look a little ridiculou in there will be very pretty. And then you make it. You make it like a classic caesar dressing. It's like a creamy

and chovy lemon garlic key dressing. Some croutons on top. You can use pia chips if you want to instead of making crutons. Mix it up. Salves done, and then what's your what kind of past do you want to make? Make your penny halivodka? Seriously that's your go to and honestly that's plenty. And then and then you know, go to like go to a market and get some olives, some cheeses, some like a good jam. Just put that out like you're not cooking any of that. You just

assembly just make it look pretty on a platter. Get some crackers, like people will be oppressed. Yeah, okay, love um, don't ruin the flay name in the kitchen, god right, I know it's like such a nightmare. Oh that looks pretty good. And of course you can do this with chickpeas as well. I just like the wiping idea, and it's always good to have. This is a good dish to have around, like in refrigerator when people come over, like the last second as well, what's so funny? Like

no one does that anymore. I feel like I feel like it was like so plastic to like just have something ready, like like maybe when you were younger, but like no one just like shows up anymore. You don't know, I mean I show up at your that's different to show up my house. So basically, so basically what you want to do here is like, so, so you have some of the hummus and I make like a little bit of a well there, put a little olive oil in there, nice and then look a little bit of

human on top, little cayn. Yeah, and then you know you can just surn this like you know, with some peeda chips. Cool and like this is like, you know, if you're having a dinner party, this is like one of the things that you can you can you can put after that people get there, you can just give them a drink or a glass of wine. Just give this to kind of get going. You can put some

olives out and stuff like that. I think that you don't have to be cooking while they're there, and this way you can get back in the kitchen and finish your your cooking. Nice. Okay, this is really good t spicy, No, alright, I like that? Um okay. But also and like, what should people drink? Like? I feel like making like a big cocktail batchers kind of a big undertaking. Now it's not that's to me. Well, first of all, you should

have other than just being like, let's just drink wine. Well, you can do that, but if you want to get like a little fancy and make it feel special, you can make one house cocktail and you make it in did I give you one of the punch bowls? Now, okay, I have to give that to you for your next birthday. You always say that, Well, you can either put it in a punch bowl or a picture. Yeah, but like a house cocktail, like that's so let me, let me help you help you. What is everybody drinking these days

in Italian restaurants. Yeah, they're drinking sprints. So you should make a sprits. Here's how you do it. You want to make april campari. So basically it's yeah, it's april and prosecco in club soda. That's it. Yeah, but how much of each to make a big batch of it? I mean, you just look it up. It's like it's like you just measure it. You just you just get you look like like, for instance, if it's like, let's just say it's like two ounces to one ounce to

one ounce, so it's to one one. So basically, you get a measuring cup out and you go two cups of this to one cup of this to one cup of that, until you think you have enough got it, and then you let and don't put the prosecco in there. Put the prosecco at the end, next to next to it, and let people top off the sprints so it stays effervescent. And then slice a bunch of oranges, put those into the thing, have some sliced oranges next to it, and then yeah, I mean, listen your friends, like most of

your friends, have good decorum, everybody, everything's gonna look great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. And then dessert. I mean, you know, on Thanksgiving I tell people to bring dessert, but I think for dinner party you should. You should take care of it. What why? I mean, if you're not cooking to service, should I make dessert? I'm let's saying you should make it. I'm saying you should take care of it. You want do

you want to make something? No? Okay, so then go to like, um, just go to someplace and buy like a food tart or something, a food tart or a cake. Get some like gelato because you're serving Italian food. That's it. Get some biscodi. People are gonna love it. Okay, I mean you don't mind. Am I going to get invited to this party? Maybe I'm not cooking. I'm not. I'm not coming to do a test around before invite. Okay for this many people though, Like, how do you feel

about decorations at a dinner party? I mean I don't. I'm not into decorations. I want my table to look nice and I like I like fresh cut flowers. I think that that's pretty Yeah yeah, and also candles. How do you feel about um unscented candles? Yeah, candles, okay? Um tablecloths? You don't ever use tablecloths? I used sometimes I used um table like runners. No, runners are nice too, but um, what do you call it? Place mats? Mats? Yeah? I use place mats. And then you stack the plates

next to the food. You put the food out all in the same place, and let people take what they want and leave what they don't want. I'm sure people ask all the time, like when you're having a dinner party and people like, how can I help? Like what are like easy things that you can be like, oh,

go do this? Um? You mean when they get when they get here, and you just say, help me, help me put this food out, Like like I'm taking the pasta down, can you help me like put it in the bowl and put it out there and that kind of stuff, or can you make sure that, um, there's all the napkins are out there. But you should the table should be set before everybody gets there. You have to do a few hours of prep before people get Yeah, you really do, oh, absolutely, because otherwise then you're never

gonna be able to socialize. You're gonna be panicked. Oh my god, over and a good playlist. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not going to comment on that. I'm gonna let you do that. Okay, what's the playlist? I literally have. There's a great Spotify playlist called Dinner with Friends and it is my absolute go too. It's so good. What is it? What is it? It's like it's Spotify, Yeah, on Spotify. Um, I have actually seven million notes on this piece of paper right now. This is good. This

is very helpful. It is okay, yeah, very helpful. Um, all right, Well, am I going to get an invite to this? Yeah? I think, well, I think maybe the second one. I'm gonna let my friends to have the burnt Boster first. I'm coming over, but after the cookie has done. Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flay. Our executive producer is Christopher Hacids. Always Hungry is produced, edited and mixed by Jonathan hosts Dressler. Always

Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more podcast from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.